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Confessor A.D. – Too Late To Pray (2018)REVIEW

Hailing from the unlikely city of Strasbourg, France a city known for very little metal outside of hard-to-find death metal band Apoplexy, Confessor A.D. appear with a professional first EP showcasing their black and thrash metal influenced form of old school death metal. The style of death metal they play is semi-melodic and highly influenced by Scandinavian death metal as well has early Death, ‘The Cube’ era Supuration, with a tendency to drop into late 80’s thrash metal riffing throughout. What stands out most with their taste in thrash riffs is that they don’t seem to be pulling from the obvious places that death metal bands often do. When they’re fully thrashing a la “Endless Night” it recalls the style of Polish band Quo Vadis on their first album as well as hints of Sadus.

Though most of ‘Too Late to Pray’ feels like a salad of ideas still being formed into one almost-secure musical personality, the disparate elements are compelling in their odd pairings of punkish thrashing and tremolo picked black/death. One moment I’m feeling a speed metal riff and the next it pushes into the sort of death/thrash metal you’d expect from a long lost Ripped record. The EP as a whole has an early Obliteration vibe as they danced between death/thrash and blackened death riffs. It’s all a bit hard to nail down, I think because it is surprisingly melodic and an amateur recording. I enjoyed the trip of listening through and not being able to nail down their sound. I couldn’t attribute Confessor A.D.‘s style to just one central influence.

When a band’s music is all about the riffs and the experience sets out to create memorable arrangements it tends to push the music towards a conglomerated style that makes compromises as metal bands iterate and tour. Confessor A.D.‘s sound is compelling because their ideas and influences aren’t melted together into generic slop yet, and the arrangements land into the pocket of 90’s demo era death metal that feels exuberant and adventurous. The vocals are a bit all over the place and need to find tonal experimentation beyond the occasional pitch-shifted weirdness, but otherwise I had a good time spinning this EP and look forward to what this band will do in the future. It’s hard to recommend 1-2 particular songs here but “Haunting Enemies”, “Hipster Killer” and “Endless Night” were standouts upon repeated listens, though at that point you mayas well just be listening to the entire thing.